The Leopard Sword by Michael Cadnum

quick, too-clever hands.
    The Santa Croce had one of the old-fashioned steerboards, not a rudder but an oarlike device unattached to the stern. Edmund offered to help the helmsman, and his assistance was accepted as Nigel and I looked on.
    Edmund’s eyes took on a sorrowful serenity as he guided the ship, the helmsman—a stout individual with many missing teeth—beside him offering quiet encouragement in a half-comprehensible dialect.
    â€œI think,” said Nigel, “our friend Edmund is a born seaman.”
    Our ship began to show signs of wear.
    Water began to slosh back and forth in the hold, and two men worked a pump during daylight hours, in an effort to preserve the rummage, the casks and chests stored there.The pump was a wheezing, spluttering mechanism, a bellowslike affair. The sailors showed every evidence of urgency, and they sang holy songs as they worked.
    Sir Nigel tried to coax our priest, but, after a day of brooding, Father Stephen continued to maintain that no soul dead by suicide deserved even a brief shipboard rite, and certainly not Osbert. Sir Nigel at last called a short requiem into the salt spray, and one of the Genoan sailors gave prayer in his vernacular, a common port language, unfit for holy office. It was the language of taverns and dice cups, and yet when the prayer spoke of Dio, more than one of us made the sign of the holy cross.
    Afterward Sir Nigel confided to me that “ship men are a devil-fearing lot. That’s why we need the prayers, to lay the ghost.”
    â€œDo ghosts pursue Genoans in particular?” I asked, trying to make light of the subject.
    â€œWhat man doesn’t fear the devil?” said Sir Nigel.
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    Early one predawn, the spruce-wood mast split, with a resounding report.
    Captain Giorgio adopted the habit of actually striking his sailors with the knotted rope he swung, and the ship took on a glum, harried atmosphere, passengers and crew alike watching the weather and the distant rise and fall of land.To take the pressure off the mast, sails were set on stays that thrust out on either side of the ship, so that our vessel must have looked like some great, oceangoing hen.
    The water in the bilge sloshed and groaned with a sound like Osbert’s my lord, my lords, and at night I woke, sure that I had heard the servant whisper, Soon, my lord Hubert.
    You’ll swim with me soon.
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    They call it rak, the scudding, low clouds that crawl across the sky. Some folk can read the shapes of clouds and see the harm to come. My father said such talk was foolish, but paid good coin to a stargazer once to hear my future told.
    The astrologer recorded the hour of my birth, scratching the details onto vellum with a new goose quill. “Taurus,” he intoned meditatively, studying the scroll, “with Gemini rising. A nature that contradicts itself. Brave at heart, but changeable. Well-liked, but determined.”
    â€œThat’s my Hubert!” said my father.
    A week later the cunning man invited my father and the younger, boyish version of myself into his smoky study. “Your son will do you honor,” he said, smiling within his scholar’s beard.“He will be a pilgrim, according to the stars.”
    My father leaned forward in his chair. He had hoped to learn that I was destined for knighthood, and could not hide his disappointment.
    â€œHe’ll travel to many holy shrines,” said the astrologer hastily.“He’ll win you the favor of Heaven with his prayers.”
    My father had paid good silver for the best sword masters he could hire, and swore ever after that astrologers were fools.
    Now I wished I had the advice of a wise, far-seeing fortune-teller. The ship was surrounded by rising mist that twisted into shapes like ghosts, and when a sailor spoke, the words died on his lips, every sound absorbed by the chilly vapor.

NINETEEN
    Land appeared again one afternoon, a rind of coast, low